The Ultimate Guide to Getting Pinterest Traffic

If you are a new blogger, there is nothing more frustrating than getting zero traffic. What’s the point of spending all this time blogging if nobody is going to see it?

Even if you are doing everything right as far as SEO is concerned, it can still take some time to grow your search traffic. Google’s indexing bots have to discover your site, index your pages, and refresh their SERPs before you start to appear.

What can you do in the meantime?

That’s where social media comes in, and specifically Pinterest. Pinterest may not have the most traffic of all the social media sites, but it does bring in 3.6% of all referral traffic, and that’s the statistic that matters. With Pinterest, you start on a more level playing field, and it is relatively easy to begin gaining a following.

So why is Pinterest so good at bringing people to your website and blog? In large part, it’s because people visit Pinterest specifically looking for either information on things to buy or for inspiration. They want to discover your website. As a general rule, its users are wealthier than users of other social media sites, with an average user boasting a household income of over $100,000. And though it debuted several years ago, it is still going strong; according to a report by Global Web Index, Pinterest’s active users grew by 111% in 2014. As a blogger, you can make all of this work for you and get lots of high-quality traffic to your blog. Here’s how.

How to Set Up Your Pinterest Profile

People tend to browse the online pinboard site and repin a lot of what they see. But for people to even find your boards and pins in the first place, the thing that matters most is how you set up your profile in general. For starters, give your Pinterest page a name in line with your pen name, blog or even your Twitter handle; in other words, a name that people will recognize or even Google.

Also, set it up as a business account, even if you’re not a “business” per se, as this will allow you to get your Pinterest profile verified. What this does is much more important than a little check mark next to your name. It also gives you access to Pinterest analytics, so that you can watch everything from how many people are pinning directly from your blog or website to how often your pins are being repinned.

Generally speaking, your profile should also be built out in such a way that it focuses on one niche and one niche only. Why? Because you want followers to come visit your Pinterest page and follow all your boards, not just some of them, so they’re always alerted when you create a new board. So if you have a blog about interior design but also a great love of skateboard culture, it might be best to save your skater pins for another account.

Publish Irresistibly Pinnable Images

Images, of course, are what Pinterest is all about, and therefore optimizing the images and photos you choose to publish on your website and pin to your account is the most important thing you can do to earn more traffic from Pinterest. Blog posts with at least one image are shared at least twice as much as blog posts with no images, a fact that really underscores the power of the image.

Additionally, you want your images to get repinned, because the most successful accounts on Pinterest are getting a ton of repins. On Pinterest, 80% of all pins are repins. Repins are what drive traffic from Pinterest. So how do you create irresistibly pinnable images?

Study Color Psychology

Color psychology does play a part in which images get repinned the most often. For example, studies have shown that when images feature a variety of dominant colors, rather than just one dominant color, they’ll get more repins and shares. Medium lightness in color also works better than very light or very dark images. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Check out Curalate’s infographic about pinnable images:

Post Images Specific to Pinterest

A rule of thumb when it comes to social media marketing is not to post the same thing on every single network. You may have overlapping followers on each site, and the last thing they want to see is the same content reused over and over the same way. Take this rule a step further and create and post images specifically for Pinterest users. Study the kinds of things that get pinned in your industry, and try to imitate their success. Remember that if you upload an image straight to Pinterest, you need to edit the pin after posting in order to add a link to your website.

Sizing Matters Too

The images that get the most repins also have something else in common: they’re typically long and skinny, something that Pinterest in general seems to favor. After all, they have restrictions on the width of images, but not height. Ideally, your images will be between 238 and 735 pixels wide – they will display at 238 pixels wide on Pinterest, and will expand to up to 735 pixels when clicked. The length is up to you – longer images will take up more real estate on the screen. (To a certain extent, at least. More recently, Pinterest has been capping some very long images with an “Expand Pin” button – in my very quick and unscientific investigations, this has happened at around 760 pixels in height when the image is scaled to a 238 pixel width.)

Add a Descriptive Text

Imagery is important, but so too is text. Include a caption for each image, and describe the image or blog post in such a way that people are enticed to click-through to your site, a call-to-action if you will. It doesn’t hurt to include a few keywords – this is the only part of the pin that will be searchable, so make it count. Additionally, if you’re pinning a product, be sure to include the price as Pinterest will include a price banner on the pin and include it in the Gifts section.

Superimpose Text, Too

Text should also be used on the image. The text you superimpose can be used in many ways. For one, it can directly tell people what they’ll learn about when they click, like if they’re going to find out about the 25 best winter soup recipes, for example. This isn't to say that every image needs to have text overlaying it, but text can make pins that link to blog posts more appealing. Suddenly, this pin isn’t just a single soup recipe – it is a gateway to 25 recipes. How useful! I’d better pin that for when my next soup craving strikes!

It’s a good idea to include the name of your site or your URL somewhere on the image. That way, if the image is reposted on another site or the link is changed, people will still be able to track down the original source.

Post Frequently But Don’t Spam

When it comes to how often you should post, a good rule of thumb is one to five times a day, as this way it won’t seem like you’re “spamming” your network by overwhelming their feed. Pinning throughout the day instead of in one big Pinterest binge also has the benefit of keeping your content fresh and interspersed throughout your followers’ main feeds.

Make Your Blog Pinterest-Friendly

Success on Pinterest begins on your website. In fact, some sites can even have a Pinterest-optimized website that brings them tons of Pinterest traffic without even having a profile of their own. (Yes, that’s how amazing Pinterest can be when it comes to driving traffic.) Here are just a few ways you can be as Pinterest-friendly as possible.

Use Social Sharing Buttons

Studies have shown that sites with share buttons, such as a “pin it” button, actually get seven times more shares than those without. If you’re using WordPress, it pays to install the pin it button for images plugin, or the more advanced user, the jQuery pin it button plugin. This puts a “pin it” button on all of your images when a visitor hovers, and with a simple click, your readers can pin your blog’s images right from your website. If they roll over an image they find interesting, the pin it button is a great reminder of somewhere they can save it.

Show Off Your Pinterest Feed on Your Blog

If your Pinterest feeds closely relate to your blog, you could even display some of them on a sidebar or within your posts to entice visitors to follow you. My favorite free Pinterest gallery plugin is Alpine Photo Tile for Pinterest, which has a half-dozen different tile configurations to choose from. It also pulls the image files onto your own site, instead of loading them from Pinterest, to improve your loading times.

SEO Those Images

Add a meaningful description as an alt tag on each and every one of your images. When the images get pinned off your website, that’s the description that will get pulled! That way if they don’t add any of their own text to the caption, which they more than likely won’t, there will still be something there that can entice people back to your site.

In case you’re wondering, there’s a plugin for this, too. SEO Friendly Images will let you specify how you would like to structure alt tags for your images, such as using the title of the post. This is a great time saver, and it will not only automatically alt-tag your future image uploads, but will go back and do all your previously uploaded images, as well.

Build Your Pinterest Empire

Now it’s time to spread your influence and grow your number of followers, because the right setup for your Pinterest account and your blog is just the start of things.

Follow Influential People and Brands in Your Industry

Chances are, other industry leaders are doing something you can emulate. But that’s not the only reason to see what they’re up to on social media. Provided they’re not direct competitors, you can also repin their images. This is important because, in order not be seen as a spammer or someone only posting self-promotional content, you should be pinning only 50% of images from your blog/site, and the other 50% should be pins from elsewhere.

Pinterest will offer up suggestions, but you can also go searching for brands you love, or check out similar boards to yours. After all, every time you pin or repin something on Pinterest, you’ll see another board that also has what you just pinned:

Use Keywords and SEO Best Practices

To make it easy for people to find you, create a list of keywords that fit your brand and content. Use these keywords liberally (but naturally) everywhere from your board titles to each pin’s caption.

Consider Social Automation

Linking to your other social media sites can help expand your influence. Pinterest makes this easy to do. For one, every time you add a new pin, it gives you the option to pin to Twitter too; experiment on some of your pins to see if this works for your audience. To simplify this even more, you can use automation tools like IFTTT that link your Pinterest and Twitter so that their RSS feeds are linked.

However, a word of caution: overly automating your social accounts can be dangerous, so be careful how you set this up. Remember that your followers followed you on a specific network because that is the way they would like to receive your updates; inundate them with automated updates from another network and they may not be too happy.

Get Involved In Group Boards

Start your own group boards and invite your favorite fans and followers. This can work wonderfully because they can do all the pinning for you, but it’s still tied to your brand. But if you’re looking to expand your influence more, also join popular group boards so you have access to an audience you normally wouldn't.

To really illustrate the power of group boards, here’s an example. Renew My Home is an interior design blog that was trying to build up their following on Pinterest. They struck gold after joining two group boards, including one followed by over 15,000 Pinterest users:

After joining this board and pinning for just a few days they had already earned 100 brand new followers! Actively pinning to and engaging with the pinners on group boards is great for building your followers.

Be a Part of the Community

As with any social media site, participate in the community, and this will pay off for you tenfold. One way to do this is to type in your keywords in the search function in order to find people who are interested in the same thing. You can also investigate people who have pinned the same things as you by clicking on images you’ve repinned to your own boards. Next, follow their pages, and then go ahead and start liking (and even repinning) their pins. When you do this, they’ll be notified, and since you’ve done a lot of activity on their page, they’re more likely to notice — and in turn check you out or follow you back.

Analyze & Repeat

After doing all this work to get more Pinterest traffic, it’s important to check all your activities to see what works best. There are a variety of sites that can do this for you, but the two to start with are both free: Pinterest’s Analytics page, and Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a great way to see your most influential followers as well as keep track of other metrics. For one, when in Google Analytics, look under “traffic sources” and view your “referrals.” This way you can see how many pins link back to your site, and you can continue to grow your community by thanking the people who are repinning your content the most.

To access your Pinterest Analytics, verify your website. Once you’re verified, you can use Analytics to learn more about your followers and what they prefer to pin.

Pinterest only continues to grow and expand, making it easy for all sorts of people — from bloggers to businesses — to reap the benefits of this social image bookmarking site. I hope you enjoyed this guide – please share it with your friends and followers!

Have you tried using Pinterest to draw in traffic? Have you seen success from a particular strategy? Share your stories in the comments below!

Adrienne Erin is a freelance writer and designer obsessed with blogging and social media. She’s been blogging, in one form or another, ever since she started using the internet – and having grown up with the technology, has learned a few tips and tricks along the way. You can see more of her work by following @adrienneerin on Twitter or visiting her blog, Design Roast, where she talks about what it takes to improve as a designer.

Getting Traffic from Pinterest was very hard for me, but after reading this post I made mistake while pinning images over there I never use any keywords with those images which is the major reason I didnt get traffic.

I haven't actually created one for Design Roast yet (I know — shame on me!). I have a personal account and have created them for other blogs of mine, though. I pin generally under the username fogbutton and for my blog Cleverpedia under the username cleverpedia.

Great blog! I have only just started my blog http://www.sizzlingtowardssixty.com.au and am finding there is so much to learn. I was getting discouraged as to how I could increase my presence in cyberspace however there is so much information including blogs like this one to help. I hadn't even considered pinterest. Thanks again and don't forget to sizzle! 🙂

Again It Was a Great Article. Right Pinterest is one of the great source for referral traffic on website. Just use pins smartly on a website and you will get huge traffic on a website. Thanks for Sharing this article 🙂

There are more important things when you are a beginning blogger than social media. Guest blogging, blog commenting and blogger outreach come before social media. When we are just one person businesses, we need to make decisions and your decision to skip it for now is just fine!

I would say the important things to do regarding Pinterest right now would just be to make your website pin-friendly; I'm a huge fan of the jQuery pin it button plugin for WordPress. Just install the plugin, set a custom pin it image (I made one for one of my blogs, Cleverpedia, in 5 minutes using the free image editing tool Canva), and just let it go — when people roll over images and see the "pin it" functionality right there, they'll be more inclined to pin your images! 🙂

One of the best 'How to Do Pinterest' posts I've ever read – really useful, thank you. May I add one tip? At the beginning you say that you have to wait for Google bots to discover your site – in fact, you can 'submit your blog to Google' (also Bing, Yahoo, MSN) and it certainly speeds up the process of getting discovered (my page views doubled overnight, although they were very low at the time!) Just google it, wade through the companies offering to do it for you until you find the Google submit form itself. One word of warning: don't do this until you have been blogging for a few months. If Google sees an almost empty site, then that is not good! But it's easy and quick.

I have never focused my mind on getting the Pinterest Traffic. But after reading this valuable guide, I understood the importance and the need of Pinterest traffic for a blog. Thank you so much for sharing this awesome piece with us. Keep inspiring us 🙂

It's a HUGE time-suck some days – I love the inspiring quotes, hair styles and nail polish pins the best.

I just got a new social media plug-in, Social Warfare, where you can optimize your images for Pinterest. So, even though the reader sees whatever size you use regularly for your blog, when they pin it, it uses a Pinterest perfect sized image that you put into Social Warfare. It's lightweight for a social media plug-in also.

Thanks for taking the time to comment and I hope you don't get stuck at Pinterest today (unless you want to!) Sue

Hey, I hadn't heard of Social Warfare — I'll have to try that one out!

For my blog Design Roast, one of the best things I've started doing image optimization-wise is creating two versions of my featured image — a blank one that I use as the actual WordPress "featured image," and one with text superimposed, as I mentioned in the article, that I put on the post itself. When someone shares the post on Pinterest or elsewhere, they are inclined to choose the attractive image that has text superimposed. Plus, it doesn't take much more time than picking out the featured image and slapping on some text! 😉 If you're in a hurry, Canva is a great free tool for that, Vidya!

Good luck and I hope you don't get sucked into Pinterest for too long! 🙂

I've been using Pinterest for a while and I would agree with your points here. It's definitely worth the time to create images specifically for Pinterest, as it can get a lot of visibility and many more pins simply with a better image.

Well, that's a very complete post about how to use Pinterest if I ever read any on the subject.

I know that Pinterest is getting more and more attention, because this is a visual world after all. I also know, that's it's easy to make mistakes unless you know all the ins and outs of Pinterest. this article was very educational for sure.

Recently I've increased my use of Pinterest, but I know that still some work needs to be done and I will save this post for further reference.

Hi Sue and Adrienne, I was trying to get traffic from Pinterest from a long day. But it was hard for me, as I was missing some of important factors before pinning any image on Pinterest. But after reading this post i found my faults and going to use in a right way.

This a complete guide on Pinterest and actually I am amazed how small things like image color plays an important role in Pinterest.

Hi Sue, I have been reading regularly for about a month, since I started blogging at Hudson Valley Lighting. Thanks for all the good advice and encouraging words. This guest post by Adrienne was excellent. I learned a few really good things from it which I will be implementing going forward.I started using Pinterest privately almost as soon as it was born a few years ago; I immediately loved it but soon abandoned it for the time-suck reasons mentioned above. Now, it is part of my job to pin and I couldn't be happier about it. Figuring out the smartest ways to pin takes time. We have lots of followers and I am pleased with the boards we post; figuring out how much to "socialize" through this social media channel is difficult to ascertain. Again, thanks for such a helpful and thoughtful post, and for the positive feeling your blog cultivates!

Welcome to the Successful Blogging Team! So glad you enjoyed Adrienne's post.

Pinterest isn't so much a social thing – even if it's called "social media". Just make sure you pin other people's content 75% of the time and your business's content 25%. So, I do 4 pins and only one is mine every time I pop onto Pinterest for 5 minutes 3xday.

Thanks for sharing this comprehensive post on getting the best out of Pinterest. I'm really not on pinterest a lot, but I found it interesting to see that it has a way to check your stats within the site.

I've been getting more and more into metrics now to see how well my blog and other sites are doing as oppose to before. This is one of the missing pieces within my marketing and this proved to me the validity of why people would choose marketing as a major in college. Before I didn't have a clue why LOL

But it all makes sense now! I guess it had to take a kick in the rear and experience to figure this all out. And you know what? I'm glad i did!

Thanks for taking the time to comment, Sherman! It's great that you've gotten so into your analytics — measuring and evaluating is the best way to improve! 🙂 It's a great way to be competitive with yourself to make your blog the best it can be.

Very comprehensive post to optimize Pinterest sharing and reap its maximum benefits.

I have recently started giving more time to share my posts at Pinterest and just in one week I got 46 repins to my posts as compare to the time when I used to simply share my post and hardly get 4 or 5 repins. This is one of the most responsive social media platforms indeed.

Board following is a wonderful way to expand your outreach by keeping resharing the pins of your niche-related boards. But many times boards despite receiving so massive response from a pinner don't give sharing rights to him.

So the alternate solution is to send direct request to board admins for the sharing rights and mostly such requests are accepted if the applicant is already actively involved in a given board. To search the niche related boards PinGroupie is an amazing resource.

Thanks for sharing a very useful post to optimize Pinterest marketing.

Since you have done your first comment, you are officially a member of the Successful Blogging Team!

When you are a beginning blogger, everything seems as important as the next thing. Pinterest is a great social media channel for your target audience. And blog commenting (which you are doing!), guest blogging and blogger outreach are the most important activities to spend your time on.

Thank you for such an incredibly informative and helpful article, Adrienne! (Sue Anne, you always have the best guest posts! :)) For me, Pinterest has been huge in getting traffic to my site. I really appreciate that it is a level playing field; though you are right, if you optimize your images (specifically taking great pictures and making them long and narrow), they are more likely to be repinned. At least that has been my experience. I have not done a lot with keywords but need to remind myself to do so while writing the copy for my images. After all, Pinterest is a search engine! 🙂 Thanks again for this article. And have a great day!

Welcome, Sue, and thanks for commenting! Pinterest is a great resource for many bloggers, especially those whose blogs focus on imagery — recipe blogs, travel blogs, DIY blogs, and interior design blogs especially. You can set your blog up to be Pinterest-friendly with minimal effort and let it go. Like Sue said, activities that will pay off big earlier on are guest blogging and blog commenting. Good luck!!

Thanks Adrienne! So much to learn – what started as an interest has taken over my life LOL:) I'm enjoying learning as I go along. I might not have the world's greatest blog or win a Pulitzer Prize but I'm giving it a go. Thanks for the insights and have a lovely weekend.

Tall images DEFINITELY get more attention on Pinterest. So much so that I have started seeing recipe bloggers creating images especially for Pinterest that stack 2-4 images of their recipe, with superimposed text describing what the recipe is for. They get these on Pinterest in various ways — they might include the tall image in their blog post (I don’t see many recipe bloggers doing this), they might use a plugin like the one Sue described to suggest a Pinterest image for pinners, or they might even use a trick described by KissMetrics — crap I can’t seem to include the link but Google How to Beat the Image Bias of Pinterest to find it — to invisibly include the image on the page for pinners. Some bloggers just upload the tall image manually and edit it to add the link.

Whatever method you use, I encourage you to try a few things and see what works best. But I’d bet you that you’ll see more engagement from tall images than short! 🙂 Good luck!

It is unlikely (but not impossible) that Google takes into consideration the number of repins that images linking to your site have when deciding how to rank your site. However, the more repins your images have, the more likely they are to appear in more influential pinners' boards. You have undoubtedly come across Pinterest boards while searching on Google — if these boards are able to rank for some good terms, you can bet that a little bit of that value will be passed along to you!

That being said, the primary advantage of pushing for Pinterest is not really SEO — instead, Pinterest is a great organic source of traffic. It can be a great way to build a social following for your site, if it caters to the kinds of things that succeed on Pinterest!

Wow, I can say this is actually a quite informational article, Pinterest is changing and updating many things this year, they are launching buy button and from today Pinterest start removing all affiliate links. SO if anyone using pinterest to increase affiliate sale, that person need to work on images and posts rather than sharing links.

Interesting — I thought that Pinterest had already cracked down on affiliate links in the past few years. If you are hoping to use your Pinterest audience to earn an affiliate income, you're going to be best off trying to pull the traffic to your own blog instead of sending the traffic through an affiliate link. You can go back and edit the URLs of old pins to point them to your posts containing those images (and those affiliate links).

Very attractive article from Sue Anne Dunlevie i do agree with this post Pinterest is one of the best way to promote our blog my personal experience with Pinterest has got backlinks and happy when we get backlinks from high page rank site.. adding a Pinterest icon in our blog is very easy to pin our new articles and learned some new tips on imaging with different way on Pinterest will follow your blog regularly…

This was something I honestly didn't know.. I though it was other way around since those things mentioned takes time especially guest blogging.. I guess the easiest thing to start with would be commenting.. 🙂

Yes, start with commenting on other blogs and sharing their posts on social media for at least 3 weeks. Then ask if you can do a guest post. Your name will be familiar to them after 3 weeks of comments.

Excellent article. Thank you.I have very recently set up my Pinterest business account and started with my first board. I've been spending some time researching best practices so I can get it right from the word go. I think I am ready to start filling my boards now and implementing all that I have learnt from here, from Curalate (excellent infographic- thanks), and from other blogs. http://www.kidherostories.comYin recently posted…test

Just read you post. What a great list of ideas I can take with me. I am just playing on Pinterest at the moment and with other social media while I run around trying to prioritise what is most important for my blog that is prepared and so not prepared.

I just wanted to tap in and say yet again, your advice and knowledge seems to know no bounds and I am blessed to have stumbled across your work.

Thanks for priceless hints. Unfortunately I struggled with Pinterest a lot, hope that this will end soon. Although I know many people who have absolutely no problem with Pinterest traffic and I would say our activity is quite similar.

That's really a great post and Pinterest is definitely one of the best social bookmarking website where one can find thousands of great articles of his choice.

Pinterest can also be used for getting traffic, and to get more knowledge about a particular topic. This guide is perfect for those who wants to drive traffic from Pinterest to their blogs and get most out of it.

I use PinPinterest com to automate and manage my Pinterest account. Settled for it after looking a lot for a decent Pinterest manager tool. I like the way it intelligently learns and pins only pins relevant to my business to my boards. I normally schedule a week's pins on mondays and it does the rest 😀 It does all the Pinterest-related operations on Auto-Pilot, so yes, it is literally my Pinterest Media Manager 😀

The ads keep coming up, so its a bit annoying, but other than that, PinPinterest is truly the tool you'd want if you want to rule Pinterest B-)

Well, I have tried my hands on other social networks for generating traffic. I figured out that Google+ works perfectly for me It's time to try Pinterest, bookmarked your article for further action. Thanks for the awesome guide.

Really an amazing and comprehensive post! I can only add something to the blogging part. To make people share your content more try to use a high image as a featured image of your blog post. I discovered this recently because people on pinterest preffer repinning images that are oblong, and they appear in the feed better and take more space. So this way you can get noticed easier and make that post go viral. In wordpress I usually set a normal featured image as well that other social meadia platforms get and then hide it from the blog post. After that I manually insert a pinterest specific image at the top of the post. Make sure that you also have a plugin like "Pinterest Pin It Button On Image Hover And Post" so that when people hover on your image they can see a nice pin it button 😉

Hello, nice post indeed. I too use Pinterest but often overlooked its use. I post regularly on Pinterest but didn’t add descriptive texts to it. So thanks for the post because it has shown me where I was going wrong. Hope it will now g=drive me some traffic.

A really very useful guide to Pinterest. With regards to hashtags, how many would you suggest using per pin. I'm worried that if you use too many that it looks spammy but then again you get all the advantages of names and descriptions from having rich pins set up and shown first does it even matter. Would love your insight on this.